*The lines of distinctions between theistic evolution, progressive
creationism and intelligent design seem rather blurry frankly.
As evangelicals, we posit that God is active in all things. Would
not sustaining the creation (all that is, was and ever will be) be taking
an "active" role?*

Thanks Merv -- this is exactly what I was trying to suggest.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciated Collins' book and admire him, and I'm very
glad he's injecting some new ideas into the coversation and that
publications such as Christianity Today are taking notice. But, I still
think his book was seriously weakened by some of his broader jabs at ID. In
many cases, the TE pointing a finger at ID has three fingers pointing back
at himself. At some point, given an orthodox understanding of God's
sovereignty, it seems to me that the distinction between "progressive
creation" and "creation by evolution" becomes meaningless.

This is where I've personally found the distinction between "strong" and
"weak" design arguments helpful (or maybe better, "ID" versus "classical
design" or simply "creation").

On 3/28/07, Dawsonzhu@aol.com <Dawsonzhu@aol.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> This is one thing that bothered me about Collins' book. He certainly
> establishes beyond doubt the genetic relationships that tie all of life
> together and that fact that the human genome has changed over time. But I
> still think there's a big leap between those facts and a complete
> evolutionary story that necessarily elides any acts of progressive creation.
>
>
>
>
> This is one of the places where I struggle against a
> Calvinist position and physical realities as I currently
> understand them.
>
> In fact, what we have is something that looks like a programmer
> (maybe worse than Iain <big grin>) was fiddling. Indeed, horizontal
> transfer is not so different from taking another piece of
> code you wrote, and integrating it into a program you're
> writing. You take large chunks of code, copy it, and
> make some changes to get it to work in the new environment.
> You also see it "evolve", in the sense that eventually you
> may want to make changes independent of the original code.
> It also can have the property that it serves an entirely
> different purpose than the original code it was used in.
>
> So you have this as the given: what is observed looks very
> much like it evolved (in the sense of a rather haphazard
> process and apparently unplanned way). Added to that,
> there is disease, genetic disorders, &Co. that get thrown in
> the family dirty laundry basket.
>
> One issue is whether evolution is how things have worked for
> the last 3.5 billion years, the other issue is the theology we
> must come up with to address this.
>
> The case for evolution is pretty solid. There does not seem
> to be an alternative model that is remotely competitive, and,
> whereas there may be margins where one finds discrepancies,
> they pale in the face of the driving picture.
>
> The lines of distinctions between theistic evolution, progressive
> creationism and intelligent design seem rather blurry frankly.
> As evangelicals, we posit that God is active in all things. Would
> not sustaining the creation (all that is, was and ever will be) be taking
> an "active" role? God can know before all time what will be, and let
> it be via God's way. Nothing could be without God, and nothing can
> sustain itself without God. It is, then, at the very core of
> existence. It doesn't answer theodicy, but anyway, that is another
> conumdrum.
>
> Another thing to keep in mind is that the 2 or 3 % once view as the only
> viable DNA
> is now turned to large volumes of non-coding RNA. At least some of this
> is strongly
> thought to be driving alternative splicing. Only a few years ago,
> professionals were
> asserting that 97% on the human genome was junk with a few selfish
> parasitic elements. I
> conclude that it is better to speculate on things we know we have some
> understanding
> and realize that we don't know very much.
>
> Even if we can create life de novo in a test tube, it does not tell us
> that God doesn't
> exists. It simply affirms that the laws of this universe are such that it
> comes out this
> way, and it says how easy or difficult this might be. Yet, in the final
> analysis, who is
> the author of those laws and who sustains them. Some claim vacuum
> fluctuations
> and chance, we claim God. Well, that is the choice we all must make, but
> I think
> apart from God, life would be utterly meaningless and abysmally
> pathetic. Maybe
> it is down to what Jesus' disciples said: "where can we go?". Where
> indeed can
> we go?
>
> by Grace we proceed,
> Wayne

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Received on Wed Mar 28 09:53:44 2007